


Too Close for Comfort

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Banter, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Politics, Post-Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 14:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8164480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Peggy and Jack are in DC to defend the SSR's funding in the post-season-two era, and all the hotels are full. Except for one.
For my h/c bingo square "trapped together."





	

"You only gave us one room," Jack said blankly.

Standing at his shoulder, laden with luggage, Peggy heaved a sigh and tapped her foot. This was probably part of what made the desk clerk look at Jack in confusion. "Isn't this Mrs. --"

"No!" Jack said, with a fast, horrified look at Peggy, as if he expected her to punch him. 

Now the clerk looked politely noncommittal. "Yes, sir. In any event, we only have the room you reserved."

"I reserved two rooms," Jack said between his teeth. "Rooms. Plural. I reserved them weeks ago."

"Be that as it may," the clerk said with studied blandness, "only one room is available. I apologize for the trouble." 

Peggy said, "Don't you have any other rooms?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am. We're booked up."

"We can go to another hotel," Jack said. "We're in Washington D.C., for God's sake. There must be other hotels."

An hour later, exhausted and damp, they trudged back under the facade of the same hotel while a chill March drizzle pattered around them.

"We're in the nation's capital," Jack said between his teeth. "This is ridiculous."

"I suppose we should have expected it. Congress is in session, and cherry-blossom season is just starting, so tourists are flocking to the town. Of course the hotels are full." Peggy attempted fruitlessly to smooth down her humidity-frizzed hair, and shifted her suitcase from one aching arm to the other. "Jack, I've indulged you thus far, but I hope it is now obvious to you that we haven't a choice. At least we had him hold our reservation while we walked about chasing wild geese."

They'd been on planes for almost twenty-four hours at that point. The March weather was terrible across the country; they'd had flights cancelled, they'd missed flights, they'd ended up flying out of airports neither of them had ever heard of. All Peggy wanted right now was a hot bath and someplace to sleep. Honestly, she couldn't understand why he was making such a big deal about it. She'd camped with an all-male squad on many occasions during the war.

"I can't believe _I'm_ the one arguing against this. You realize the SSR is on life support right now, don't you? We're going to spend the next week talking to people who'll have the power to decide our future, and if it ever gets back to any of them that we're sharing a room, it's not going to help our case. You understand that, right?"

"Yes, Jack, you aren't the only one who is familiar with political expediency. However, unless you fancy camping under a railroad bridge, I suggest we take the room that is available. We can hang up a sheet for privacy if your sensibilities are so profoundly offended by sleeping in the same room with an unmarried female."

"God, what did I do to deserve this," Jack muttered, and pushed open the door.

"Sir," the clerk greeted them without a twitch. "Ma'am."

"Still got that room, I hope," Jack sighed. "We'll take it. And ..." He reached into his wallet and leaned forward. "Keep it quiet, okay? I really don't want word getting out about this ... if you know what I mean."

"How discreet of you," Peggy remarked under her breath as they climbed the stairs after the paperwork was filled out, the room paid for (along with a little extra) and the key retrieved. "I admire your commitment to avoiding gossip, but your technique could use a bit of work."

"It'll work. Trust me." Jack flashed her a quick smile over his shoulder. "Hotels are used to men taking rooms with women they aren't married to. Especially in this town. Telling tales isn't good for business, and a little bit of palm-greasing goes a long way to keeping everyone happy."

"I suppose this is your social milieu, isn't it?"

"After a fashion." He unlocked the door and opened it. There was another silence.

"Well," Peggy said after a moment, "I expect it shouldn't come as too much of a shock, after all of that, to have only one bed."

"I'm done," Jack declared, dropping his suitcase on the floor and closing the door with more force than was strictly necessary. "I'll sleep on the floor, I don't care."

"Your chivalry is a marvel," Peggy said dryly, "but it's not necessary." She laid her suitcase on the bed and opened it to retrieve a change of clothing. "I've shared close quarters with male colleagues before."

"Yeah, but a _bed?_ "

"If it matters so much to you, then you can have as much fun as you like working out a better solution." Peggy spun around with an armful of clothing, and whisked herself into the bathroom. "Meanwhile, I call the first bath."

"Hey!" Jack protested as she closed the door in his face.

"If you wish to keep yourself busy, you can see if there is anywhere nearby where we might obtain lunch," Peggy called through the door.

She heard grumbling followed by stomping around and slamming of dresser drawers as he unpacked. This was blessedly drowned out when she turned on the taps full bore.

All banter aside, she didn't wish to be a terribly obnoxious roommate -- she knew he was just as tired and edgy as she was. So she restricted herself to a brief bath, just long enough to wash off the travel grime and wash her hopelessly flattened hair.

"Jack," she said, emerging with her hair pinned up and her damp clothes bundled under her arm, "the bathroom is all yours ... ah."

He was stretched out on the bed, still fully dressed except for his shoes, and fast asleep. Out like a tired toddler, she thought, looking down at him; he'd sunk into a sleep so deep that his mouth was slightly open, twitching occasionally in the grip of dreams.

Peggy draped her damp clothes very quietly on the radiator, and then, as the room did not have a phone, she went down to the lobby to call Daniel in L.A. Even as wilted as she felt, the sound of his voice perked her up; it was like a little ray of California sunshine in the gray, wet D.C. afternoon.

"So, you and Thompson get to D.C. okay?"

"After endless delays." She laughed. "And they've put us both in the same room. Jack's beside himself."

She knew Daniel well enough to expect he wouldn't be jealous, and he didn't disappoint her. "Should I start a betting pool on how long it'll take you to strangle him?"

"Let me know if you do, so I can place a bet."

Daniel snorted. "No one warned me that you like to cheat at games of chance. Remind me never to bet against you."

"Of course I won't. Otherwise it wouldn't be a gamble, would it?"

His elaborately disgruntled noise made her smile.

"Seriously, though," he went on. "Are things okay there?"

"I don't know. We've just got in, after any number of delays. We missed the first meeting of the budget committee, which doesn't leave the best impression. Still, Jack has an appointment with some of Vernon's former colleagues this evening. Old friends of the Thompson family, I understand."

"Sharks," Daniel muttered. "Whole town is full of sharks. Be careful. And keep a tight leash on Jack."

"I trust him, Daniel."

"It's not _him_ I don't trust. Just ... be careful out there."

They exchanged some meaningless pleasantries after that, the sort of small talk that Peggy used to have little patience for; and yet, with Daniel, it was different -- she found herself seeking excuses to keep hearing his voice, until they'd both run out of small observations on things she'd seen from the plane and the everyday minutiae of the L.A. SSR since she'd left the previous morning.

Through the soft crackle of long-distance static, Daniel said, "Take care, Peggy."

"You too," she said quietly, and hung up. For a little while she kept her hand resting on the receiver, feeling irrationally as if she could maintain the connection for a little while longer, before forcing herself to pull her hand away.

Jack was still sleeping when she got back to the room. Peggy sat on the edge of the bed and toed her shoes off. She was hungry, but also very tired; like Jack, she hadn't slept on the plane. The idea of going out into the drizzle to find food was unappealing, the bed a good deal more so, even with Jack snoring within touching distance.

_We may as well get used to it now, if we're going to be doing it for a week,_ she thought, and lay down on top of the covers on her side, turning her back to him.

 

***

 

What woke her up was not the feeling of another body pressed to hers; it was the feeling of that body springing away like an electrically galvanized frog in a biology experiment.

Peggy peeled open her gummy eyes and rolled over -- she did abhor the way she felt after taking a nap. Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed, blinking and looking as tousled and bleary as she felt. "So, this is going to be endlessly awkward, isn't it?" he said with a rueful smile.

"As I mentioned, I've shared close quarters before." She sat up and stretched, feeling rumpled and woefully unprepared to negotiate for the survival of the SSR. "One particularly cold night in the French Alps, I dreamt I was having the life crushed out of me by an enormous hot-air balloon. I woke to find myself all but flattened between Sergeant Dugan and Private Morita. On the bright side, I was quite warm."

Jack shook his head with a faint grin. "So all this time, there was much better dirt on you than any of the rumors _I_ heard."

"I trust this goes no further than the walls of this room." She yawned, trying to wake up. "Do you have the time?"

"Looks like we've got about forty-five minutes 'til we meet Vernon's buddies." Jack sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Luckily the restaurant where we're meeting is right down the street. I'm gonna get changed and see if I can look a little less like something the cat dragged off an intercontinental flight."

He vanished into the bathroom. Peggy reached off the bed for her handbag and the compact mirror contained therein, and began trying to set her hair and makeup to rights.

 

***

 

Vernon's ex-friends were exactly what she expected: men Vernon's age, all of them well-dressed, loud, and overly friendly in a conspicuously fake sort of way.

"So this is the girl agent of the SSR," one of them boomed cheerfully, engulfing her hand with an overly familiar handshake. "And Joe Thompson's boy, all grown up."

"All grown up and running the SSR, sir," Jack said with a glossy, sparkling smile.

"Not exactly where I'd expect that particular apple to fall," one of the others remarked.

"Charles, don't start. At least let the boy have a drink first." The speaker motioned to a waiter.

Charles, an elderly gentleman with a bristling mustache, was not about to be placated. "I'd have thought any son of Joe's would have the sense not to charge around like a bull in a china shop, kicking over the pillars of industry that support this country."

"Sir, protecting the institutions of this country and defending it from its enemies is the guiding principle the SSR was founded on," Jack said with open-faced, guileless earnestness that would have had Peggy rolling her eyes if they'd been alone. "Enemies within _and_ without. The U.S. needs to be strong to defend itself against the growing Red threat."

The mention of Communism seemed to be enough to distract them and send them all off on a tangent about the deplorable state of world affairs. Handshakes went around, and Peggy had her chair pulled out for her. She'd already realized that, in this particular company, her main purpose was to look decorative and demure, making sure not to jeopardize their chances by appearing to be more than a glorified secretary. She'd get an opportunity to flex her political claws later on, when they would be defending the SSR's recent actions in front of the recently reorganized War Department.

The somewhat contentious start to the meeting turned out to be an accurate preview of how the evening was to go: a push-pull between the sunnily fake goodwill of men who had been playing political games all their lives, and a very real and obvious resentment -- obvious to Peggy, at least -- about the fate of the Council and Vernon Masters. These were powerful men with a long history of deals both aboveboard and not, scrambling now to make sure they could figure out which way the political winds were blowing, and let it carry them in the most profitable direction. This might be an informal meeting, but Peggy kept getting the impression that she and Jack, but especially Jack, were on trial with these men. They were not impressed by the SSR's work in cleaning up government corruption; they were more disappointed in Jack's lack of political acumen in opening that particular can of worms in the first place.

But Jack was also remarkably good at smoothing over their ruffled feathers -- she wasn't entirely sure if she'd realized how good. During the time she'd worked under him in New York, she hadn't been invited along for any of his wheel-greasing and social schmoozing with the powers that held the agency's purse strings, though she'd known it was happening. Now she got to see him in his element.

And he really did do it well. She knew that if she'd seen this performance much earlier in their acquaintanceship, she would have taken it for the real Jack, all blinding white-toothed smiles and conspiratorial winks. He was chameleonic, ingratiating himself almost effortlessly by displaying exactly what they wanted and expected to see from him. It was how he'd worked his way up in the SSR in the first place, becoming Dooley's right-hand man in a few short months. For a long time she'd been taken in as much as everyone else was. Now she could see how carefully he played the game, the way his body language and even the register of his voice shifted depending on who he was talking to.

The men dominated the conversation, but Peggy had expected that. There wasn't much for her to do other than be decorative and put up with a good deal more "little lady"ing than she'd had to endure since her very early days at the SSR. At least the food was good.

By the end of the evening, Peggy's read on the situation was that they had mixed support. No one on the table was going to be coming out and defending them publicly, but a couple of the old men had made what seemed to be sincere promises to put in a good word for them on Capitol Hill. Others, including the cantankerous Charles, appeared to have doubled down on their enmity.

After another round of handshakes and Peggy suffering her hand to be kissed, the gathering broke up, and Jack and Peggy strolled back in the direction of their hotel.

"Well, that went a lot better than I thought it might," Jack remarked. "Wouldn't be surprised if the old man gets a few upset phone calls about his wayward son, but ..." He shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time."

The topic of Jack's family was an elephant in the room they'd both skirted around, throughout the cleanup of the corrupted elements of the SSR. Now Peggy wondered if she'd done either of them any favors by not coming out and asking the question that she knew was weighing heavily on Jack's mind: _Do you know if your father is involved with the Council?_ "Do you think he'll move against us?" was what she asked instead. "Try to block the SSR's funding, I mean."

"Who, Dad? Nah. That'd mean he'd have to come down on one side or the other, and _that_ would cut into the family profits." Jack's mouth curved in something that wasn't a smile. "He might have to answer a few awkward questions at the country club, but he probably has it coming."

He sank into a brooding silence. They were almost at the hotel before Peggy broke into it.

"You're not like them, you know."

His answer was a sardonic snort. "Semantics, ain't it? Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, like they said. I do the same things they do."

"But for different reasons," she said gently. "And sometimes it's the reasons that make all the difference."

He didn't say anything else on the climb to their room -- didn't speak, in fact, until he unlocked the door and stopped abruptly in the doorway. With a sharp laugh, he went on in. "Would you believe for a few minutes there, I forgot about -- this." His gesture encompassed the single bed, dented where they'd slept earlier, and Peggy's clothes draped over the radiator.

"We can draw a line down the middle of the bed, if you'd be more comfortable that way."

He shot a sideways glance at her, saw her teasing smile, and gave her a flicker of a smile in return. "I don't think that'll be necessary."

"Excellent." Peggy flopped indelicately on the end of the bed. "I have no intention of staying awake a single minute longer than I have to." After missing a night's sleep, the nap earlier had barely made a dent in her exhaustion. It was only early evening in California, but she could already feel herself starting to crash.

"Does that mean I can have the bathroom long enough for a shower this time?"

Peggy snorted and sat up, reaching for the bag that contained her hairpins. "Given your complaints, I am going to assume you didn't grow up with brothers and sisters."

"Nope, sole scion of the Thompson line, that's me."

She glanced over, but he was rummaging in his suitcase, and she couldn't see his face. 

"An entire childhood spent without continually having to chase a sibling out of the bathroom?" she remarked with a lightness she didn't quite feel, and began rolling up her hair in pin curls by touch, with the ease of long practice. "What a dreadful fate."

"Just the one brother for you, then?"

"One was more than enough, wouldn't you say?" 

Jack grimaced and straightened up with a shirt over his arm. "Touché."

"Besides," she said around a mouthful of pins, "you and I both spent plenty of time in close quarters with our fellow men during the war. This is the very lap of luxury in comparison. No mud ..."

"Dry feet, no leaks in the roof ..."

"No lice, decent food ..."

"And no one shooting at us," Jack said. "Hopefully."

He very casually bolted the front door before he went into the bathroom, she noticed.

Peggy finished pinning up her hair, and decided to leave most of her clothes on. Sleeping in a foundation garment wasn't the most comfortable thing, but it wouldn't kill her; she'd done it more than enough times during the war.

She pulled a sheet over her and rolled over. This time, it was her turn to fall asleep first; the last thing she remembered was the sound of water running in the bathroom.

 

***

 

She woke up with a warm weight resting heavily against her side. The room had grown chilly in the night, and Jack's warmth was almost welcome, although the fact that she'd been shoved all the way to the edge of the bed was not.

Peggy propped herself up on her elbow with a sigh. The room was still mostly dark, with only a hint of gray dawn light showing through the window, but she could see that he was fully dressed -- shirt, slacks, socks; all that was missing was the jacket and tie -- and lying on top of the covers. Something in his dreams made him flinch, a sudden sharp jerk, and he pressed closer to her, settling back into deeper sleep.

She didn't have the heart to wake him up. However, she was now wide awake herself, with no particular desire to be narcoleptically snuggled upon. She got up quietly and went into the bathroom, where she took out her pin curls and finger-combed them into some semblance of order.

When she came out of the bathroom, Jack was sitting up, rubbing a hand across his face. "Forgot how much fun it is, sleeping in your clothes," he remarked.

"I was about to go find somewhere for breakfast. Care to join me?"

The puddles on the street had frozen overnight, and the air had a sharp bite. However, dawn was breaking pink and gold in a clear sky, promising a nice day ahead. They walked until they found an open cafe, and installed themselves in a booth by the window. Peggy wished it wasn't too early in L.A. to call Daniel. It was only a week; she hadn't realized she'd miss him this much.

"Today we explain ourselves to the War Department -- or I guess it's the National Military Establishment now. Different name, same good ol' boys." Jack reached for the sugar; he normally took his coffee black, but he gloomily added a heaping teaspoon. Peggy could relate to the sentiment. "Should be a barrel of laughs."

"Don't forget, I'm not here merely to smile and fetch drinks. We can count on General Phillips' backing, for one." And once she'd started putting some thought into it, she was surprised how many people she could think of, former acquaintances and allies during the war, who now occupied important positions in the American capital. The war, she suspected, had shaken up the establishment in ways that were only beginning to show up, as the rapid opportunities for advancement during the war had catapulted a number of people into positions of power and responsibility, and brought them into politics when they might not have ever been considered. Women, young people ... it was a new world now.

... in some ways. But thinking about the Council, and last night's meeting, reminded her how much the new world resembled the old one.

"Oh, trust me, Peggy," Jack said. "I can't _wait_ to see them underestimate you."

 

***

 

It turned out to be just as much of a grind as Peggy had feared. For every small triumph, there were a dozen setbacks; for every person they talked into supporting them, there were two who stood obstinately in their way. Frequent calls back to Daniel in L.A. served as her touchstone, grounding her and reminding her why she was here. It was not just the agency at stake; by saving the SSR, she was also saving her newfound happiness, her boyfriend and the tentatively carved-out place where she belonged.

But it wasn't going to be easy.

By taking on the establishment, the SSR had made itself unpopular up and down the political hierarchy. And, just as bad, it had brought itself out of the shadows. The mere existence, let alone the downfall, of the Council of Nine remained a guarded secret. However, a lot of its aftermath had been front-page news for months -- the disappearance of Vernon Masters and several well-known businessmen; the commitment of Whitney Frost, a.k.a. "America's Sweetheart", to a mental institution; the charges filed against Hugh Jones and the other surviving Council members for, among other things, colluding to throw an election and conspiracy to commit murder. All of this had swept the country in the popular media, and the SSR's role in it had been impossible to cover up. Not that the SSR had been a national secret since the war, but there were those in Washington who asked (not, Peggy thought, without some justification) how much use a covert-ops agency could be if they'd made the papers every day for months.

"We can't win, can we?" Jack lamented over a late-night strategy session with Peggy in the hotel's bar. "If we get a bunch of press coverage saying we did a bang-up job, that means we stink at staying out of the limelight. If we don't hear a peep out of the press, of course, then it's just gonna be, 'Oh, the SSR who? What do you do again?'"

She'd seen surprisingly little of him. They were both out until all hours, frequently in different parts of the city, collapsing in their hotel room whenever they had the chance. There were still better-than-even odds that Peggy was going to wake up with Jack on her side of the bed. They seemed to have developed a mutual, unspoken agreement not to mention it.

Of course there were also random encounters throughout the day, such as the time that she heard the room door unlock while she was washing out her stockings in the sink, with the bathroom door open. Jack tossed his jacket onto the bed, looked into the bathroom, and took a second look when he realized what she was doing.

"Really, Carter? Really?"

"Where else am I going to do it?" she asked reasonably, draping a stocking over the towel bar.

She had almost forgotten about it until she walked in on him about a half-hour later, washing out his socks in the sink.

"Oh, Jack, this is simply petty."

"Where else am I going to do it?"

 

***

 

"Did you knock my toothbrush behind the toilet?"

"For heaven's sake, Jack, why on earth would I do that?"

"Well, it didn't _jump."_

"Possibly it did, as it's balanced on the edge of the sink with its bristles dangling over thin air. Trust me, if I'm angry at you, you'll know it."

"I never said you did it on purpose. However, it wouldn't have been that close to the edge if you didn't have the entire contents of the Macy's cosmetics counter taking up the _rest_ of the sink."

"Says the man who owns three different brands of hair pomade."

"I'm just saying, what in the world do you need six lipsticks for?"

 

***

 

"Peggy, just checking here, but are you aware you don't have any clothes on?"

She'd walked out of the bathroom in her slip to fetch her hairbrush. She had her foundation garments under it, so it wasn't as if she was _nude._ Besides ... "You're in your undershirt," she pointed out.

"That's different."

"Oh?" she inquired, arching a brow at him. "Is it, really?"

"Don't start. At least I'm wearing pants."

"As am I." She couldn't help it.

"Not the British kind."

"Such a lot of bother over a pair of ankles. Honestly."

"This is part of a nefarious plan to get Sousa to come out to D.C. and kick my ass, isn't it."

 

***

 

She was standing on the tilting deck of a ship -- no, an airplane. The water lapping around her feet had confused her. The forward windows were shattered and cold wind blew inside, from icebergs floating on an Arctic sea.

"Steve!" she called, stumbling toward the figure tangled in straps in the pilot's seat, through water that was now up to her knees. She was only wearing a nightgown and her bare feet slid on the slippery deck plates. 

"Steve --" She fumbled with the buckles with half-frozen fingers, trying to get him loose, then looked up to find that the person tangled in the straps wasn't Steve. The open, empty eyes of her former roommate Colleen stared back at her.

"Colleen, where's Steve?"

"Dead," Colleen said. She blinked slowly. Her voice was thick; there was blood on her lips and a neat bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. "Because of you."

"No -- no, I tried ..." She stumbled backward, and looked down to find that the tide rising around her thighs was thick, dark blood, cold as ice.

"Peggy!"

Not Colleen's voice. She jerked violently, the flooding interior of the plane overlaid for an instant with a terrifying sense of unreality on the dim shapes of the furniture in the hotel room, lit faintly by the city's dull glow outside the window. She was sitting up, and Jack, on the bed, was holding her wrists. He let her go as soon as he realized she was awake.

"You were yelling." His voice was thick with sleep.

"I'm ... sorry. I didn't mean to wake you." She raised her hand to her face and was shocked and appalled to find that it was wet. She had been crying in her sleep. This was the first thing that had happened since they'd been sharing the room that was truly, deeply humiliating.

"No problem. I was going to be up in ..." Brief pause as he reached for his watch on the nightstand. "... three hours anyway."

"Go back to sleep." She rose, her face turned away. They both understood nightmares -- she'd seen him flinch and cry out softly in his sleep, had rolled over to rest a hand on his arm and felt him relax. But this had undone her, and she needed to put herself back together. She closed the bathroom door before turning on the light.

The sight of her tear-reddened face in the mirror angered her, with the dream's unreality still unsettling her and making her surroundings feel thin, as if she could fall through them into the past. _You've done with this ... the weeping. It's no good to anyone._ She splashed water on her face and scrubbed it, then patted it dry and added a bit of foundation to cover up the redness.

When she emerged from the bathroom, feeling somewhat more collected, she found the room lit up by the glow of the bedside lamp. Jack was tying his shoes. 

"Now what are you doing?"

"You going back to sleep?" he asked, glancing up with a look of challenge.

"Most likely not." She sighed and reached for a blazer. 

"Right. I figured not." A sideways half-smile. "I've had my share of that kind of thing. Want to take a walk?"

"Nothing will be open."

"I know, but it clears the head. I got to know the streets around my place in Manhattan pretty well over the first couple of months."

A few minutes later, dressed and cursorily combed, they let themselves out of the hotel lobby. A week ago, Peggy's light coat -- the warmest thing she'd had in L.A. -- had been hopelessly inadequate for the late-winter chill; now the weather had warmed, and even at night, there was a softness to the air that suggested spring. The streets were dark and deserted, except for a rare car passing slowly. It was very different from New York and even L.A., where the nightlife faded in the last hours before midnight and dawn, but never truly seemed to sleep.

"You know," Peggy said, "we're not far from the tidal basin, where the famous cherry trees are. Wouldn't you like to see them?"

"Flowers. Sounds swell."

They walked through the dark, quiet streets, and found the park along the tidal basin just as the first streaks of dawn were unfurling, pink and salmon-colored, behind the Egyptian needle of the Washington Monument, visible across the water. At first she thought, _Where are the blossoms?_ as she tilted back her head to look up at the dark blobs of tree branches against the sky. Then something touched her face, soft as falling snow, and she raised her hand and found a petal there. 

What she had taken for leaves were actually flowers, and color blushed softly into the world along with the returning light. It was not a sudden flow of colors following the dawn, but rather the stealthy seep of pink and white and pale green into the shades-of-gray world, bleeding through from underneath.

They walked slowly along the tidal basin beneath a canopy of cherry blossoms, a frozen cascade in shades ranging from white to pale pink. Petals littered the path under their feet.

"You know," Jack said after a little while, "they were a gift from the Japanese, back in the day. The trees, I mean. Goodwill gesture. Someone cut down a few of them during the war in protest -- I read about it later, wasn't here then, of course. Public outcry stopped it."

"And now the war is over, and the trees are still here."

"Guess so."

The trees and what they represented, she thought. Goodwill between nations ... but more than that, _enduring_ goodwill. A tree would outlive the person who planted it; it would outlive political regimes and conflicts, grief and regret. It was a way of saying, "We are not just friends today, but will forever be," even across a rift as deep as that of a war. Or, perhaps rephrased: "This too shall pass."

She glanced at Jack and saw him looking up at the trees in the soft light of dawn.

It would be all right if they didn't win this particular war, she thought. Perhaps the SSR had truly outlived its usefulness, or perhaps its political unpopularity was so great that it would be killed by enemies on Capitol Hill. Either way, something else would come along. Starting over wasn't so bad; it brought new opportunities, new friendships, new love.

And if there _was_ something after the SSR, she was already having the first glimmerings of what it might be. The idea had not quite come to fruition yet, but it had begun to take shape in her head. And she knew she wouldn't be alone if she tried it.

Thinking about the future, she watched the sun rise.


End file.
